Back in the Bayou

Greetings all :) I am, as of Sunday evening, back in Pearlington, Mississippi! Vacation was fantastic and it was great to get to spend time at home, see (or at least hear from) most of my family and friends. Sunday morning, however, I woke up ready to be back in the Ameriworld. I was excited to see my team, excited to get back to work and excited to get on with the rest of my 7 months of servince. Don't get me wrong, I loved being home, loved showering in a real bathroom, loved eating food not bought on $4.50 a day and loved being surrounded by people who know and love me. But, in all honesty, I never once wished I could stay for longer than my two weeks. I'm absolutely enjoying myself in AmeriCorps and I missed my team, I missed the immersion into this world that is unlike any other.

My team is awaiting the reveal of our next project and project location quite anxiously.. Ben, our team leader, claims he knows no details of where we'll be staying but our friends in other units already know their second round SPIKEs(remember-- my term of service is comprised, typically, of 5 parts; one month of training and 4, 6-9 week long project "rounds" and SPIKE is another term for project). We're pretty sure that we'll be here, in the gulf until third round but... anything is possible, really.

We're working on some new houses with Habitat this week as well as finishing up the one we helped Blitz the week before our vacation. Today we spent the afternoon framing the walls at a new house location. Framing walls seems almost like putting together puzzles, before we begin there is a "pre-build" in which partitions, trimmer-studs, cripples, headers and other pieces that make up a wall are cut to the right sizes and put together. Then, once we begin framing we align the top plate and bottom plate of the walls which are marked with letters signaling where different pieces need to be secured (S for stud, C for cripple etc.) We then fetch the pieces and nail them into the top and bottom plates and the walls are then secured to the floor. Raising walls is pretty fun and we took some pictures of us doing it today which hopefully I'll be able to track down.

Speaking of pictures, my camera is broken so for the next few posts, I'll be relying on the kindness of my team mates for pictures :)

with new years and new beginnings,
--Walker